Syrian opposition activists say a regime air strike on a petrol station on the eastern edge of Damascus has killed more than 75 people.

The petrol station, in the suburb of Mleha in the partly rebel-held Eastern Ghuta region of Damascus, was engulfed in flames, and many of the victims were badly burned.

One activist, Abu Fouad, said warplanes had bombarded the area as a consignment of fuel arrived and crowds packed the station.

Video footage taken by activists, which could not be independently verified, showed the body of a man and a helmet on a motorcycle amid flames that had engulfed the site, apparently hit while in a line of vehicles waiting for petrol.

A man was also shown carrying a dismembered body.

Government planes carried out more air strikes in and around Damascus, with a raid on another area of the city killing 12 members of the same family, most of them children.

Mleha is one of a series of Sunni Muslim suburbs ringing the capital that have been at the forefront of the 21-month revolt against the rule of president Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to the Shiite-derived Alawite minority sect.

Government forces control the centre of Damascus and have been pounding the suburbs from the air.

Warplanes also attacked the towns of Shebaa to the southeast and Deir Assafir south of Damascus, where 11 children were killed in November when cluster bombs were dropped on a playground, according to Human Rights Watch.

Reinforcements

The deadly strikes came as loyalist forces battled rebels with artillery fire in Harasta and Douma, insurgent strongholds to the north-east of the capital, and in Daraya to the south-west.

Army reinforcements have been massing for weeks in Daraya in a bid to drive rebel Free Syrian Army fighters from the town, the site of the bloodiest massacre of the conflict in which hundreds died in August.

As the fighting raged, the United Nations said more than 60,000 people had been killed in the conflict.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in Geneva that 59,648 people had died through to the end of November in the 21-month conflict, which began as a peaceful uprising in March 2011.

"Given there has been no let-up in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013," Ms Pillay said in a statement.

"The number of casualties is much higher than we expected and is truly shocking."